WHEREAS the First Amendment to the United States
Constitution was designed to protect the free speech rights of people,
not corporations;

WHEREAS, for the past three decades, a divided United States
Supreme
Court has transformed the First Amendment into a powerful tool for
corporations seeking to evade and invalidate democratically-enacted
reforms;

WHEREAS, this corporate takeover of the First Amendment has
reached
its extreme conclusion in the United States Supreme Court’s recent
ruling in Citizens United v. FEC;

WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in
Citizens United
v. FEC overturned longstanding precedent prohibiting corporations from
spending their general treasury funds in our elections;

WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in
Citizens United
v. FEC will now unleash a torrent of corporate money in our political
process unmatched by any campaign expenditure totals in United States
history;

WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in
Citizens United
v. FEC presents a serious and direct threat to our democracy;

WHEREAS, the people of the United States have previously
used the
constitutional amendment process to correct those egregiously wrong
decisions of the United States Supreme Court that go to the heart of
our democracy and self-government;

NOW HEREBY BE IT RESOLVED THAT WE THE UNDERSIGNED VOTERS OF
THE
UNITED STATES CALL UPON THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS TO PASS AND SEND TO
THE STATES FOR RATIFICATION A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO RESTORE THE
FIRST AMENDMENT AND FAIR ELECTIONS TO THE PEOPLE.

By Greg Palast | Updated from the original report for AlterNetThursday, January 21, 2010

In today's Supreme Court decision
in Citizens United v. Federal
Election Commission,
the Court ruled that corporations should be treated the same as
"natural persons", i.e. humans. Well, in that case, expect the Supreme
Court to next rule that Wal-Mart can run for President.

The ruling, which junks federal laws that now bar corporations
from stuffing campaign coffers, will not, as progressives fear, cause
an avalanche of corporate cash into politics. Sadly, that's already
happened: we have been snowed under by tens of millions of dollars
given through corporate PACs and "bundling" of individual contributions
from corporate pay-rollers.

The Court's decision is far, far more dangerous to U.S.
democracy.
Think: Manchurian candidates.

I'm losing sleep over the millions - or billions - of dollars
that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil
corporation's U.S. unit; or from the maker of "New Order" fashions, the
Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or from Bin Laden Construction
corporation. Or Bin Laden Destruction Corporation.

Right now, corporations can give loads of loot through PACs. While this
money stinks (Barack Obama took none of it), anyone can go through a
PAC's federal disclosure filing and see the name of every individual
who put money into it. And every contributor must be a citizen of the
USA.

But under today's Supreme Court ruling that corporations can
support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a
Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a
Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.

Candidate Barack Obama was one sharp speaker, but he would not
have been heard, and certainly would not have won, without the
astonishing outpouring of donations from two million Americans. It was
an unprecedented uprising-by-PayPal, overwhelming the old fat-cat
sources of funding.

Well, kiss that small-donor revolution goodbye. Under the
Court's new rules, progressive list serves won't stand a chance against
the resources of new "citizens" such as CNOOC, the China National
Offshore Oil Corporation. Maybe UBS (United Bank of Switzerland), which
faces U.S. criminal prosecution and a billion-dollar fine for fraud,
might be tempted to invest in a few Senate seats. As would XYZ
Corporation, whose owners remain hidden by "street names."

George Bush's former Solicitor General Ted Olson argued the
case to the court on behalf of Citizens United, a corporate front that
funded an attack on Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary. Olson's
wife died on September 11, 2001 on the hijacked airliner that hit the
Pentagon. Maybe it was a bit crude of me, but I contacted Olson's
office to ask how much "Al Qaeda, Inc." should be allowed to donate to
support the election of his local congressman.

Olson has not responded.

The danger of foreign loot loading into U.S. campaigns, not
much noted in the media chat about the Citizens case, was the first
concern raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked about opening
the door to "mega-corporations" owned by foreign governments. Olson
offered Ginsburg a fudge, that Congress might be able to prohibit
foreign corporations from making donations, though Olson made clear he
thought any such restriction a bad idea.

Tara Malloy, attorney with the Campaign Legal Center of
Washington D.C. says corporations will now have more rights than
people. Only United States citizens may donate or influence campaigns,
but a foreign government can, veiled behind a corporate treasury, dump
money into ballot battles.

Malloy also noted that under the law today, human-people, as
opposed to corporate-people, may only give $2,300 to a presidential
campaign. But hedge fund billionaires, for example, who typically
operate through dozens of corporate vessels, may now give unlimited
sums through each of these "unnatural" creatures.

And once the Taliban incorporates in Delaware, they could ante up for
the best democracy money can buy.

In July, the Chinese government, in preparation for President
Obama's visit, held diplomatic discussions in which they skirted issues
of human rights and Tibet. Notably, the Chinese, who hold a $2 trillion
mortgage on our Treasury, raised concerns about the cost of Obama's
health care reform bill. Would our nervous Chinese landlords have an
interest in buying the White House for an opponent of government
spending such as Gov. Palin? Ya betcha!

The potential for foreign infiltration of what remains of our
democracy is an adjunct of the fact that the source and control money
from corporate treasuries (unlike registered PACs), is necessarily
hidden. Who the heck are the real stockholders? Or as Butch asked
Sundance, "Who are these guys?"
We'll never know.

Hidden money funding, whether foreign or domestic, is the new
venom that the Court has injected into the system by its expansive
decision in Citizens United.

We've been there. The 1994 election brought Newt Gingrich to power in a
GOP takeover of the Congress funded by a very strange source.

Congressional investigators found that in crucial swing races,
Democrats had fallen victim to a flood of last-minute attack ads funded
by a group called, "Coalition for Our Children's Future." The $25
million that paid for those ads came, not from concerned parents, but
from a corporation called "Triad Inc."

Evidence suggests Triad Inc. was the front for the
ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers and their private petroleum
company, Koch Industries. Had the corporate connection been proven, the
Kochs and their corporation could have faced indictment under federal
election law. As of today, such money-poisoned politicking has become
legit.

So it's not just un-Americans we need to fear but the
Polluter-Americans, Pharma-mericans, Bank-Americans and Hedge-Americans
that could manipulate campaigns while hidden behind corporate veils.
And if so, our future elections, while nominally a contest between
Republicans and Democrats, may in fact come down to a three-way battle
between China, Saudi Arabia and Goldman Sachs.

*********

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller The
Best
Democracy Money Can Buy." Palast investigated Triad Inc. for The
Guardian (UK). View Palast's reports for BBC TV and Democracy Now! at gregpalast.com.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent: "If taken
seriously, our colleagues' assumption that the identity of a speaker
has no relevance to the government's ability to regulate political
speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions. Such an assumption
would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by 'Tokyo
Rose' during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied
commanders. More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same
protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to
individual Americans." "Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well
on its way to defeating democracy."

-- David Korten

What
is Fascism?
What is Democracy?
It is all in who has the power...

"The
end of Democracy and
the defeat of the American
Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending
institutions and moneyed incorporations."
"I believe that banking
institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies .
. . "~
Thomas Jefferson

"I
hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial
of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
~Thomas Jefferson

The
father of the Constitution, President James Madison,
wrote, "There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in
the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of
holding it in perpetuity by . . . corporations. The power of all
corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing
wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses."

President
Andrew
Jackson, in a speech to Congress, said, "In
this point of the case the question is distinctly presented
whether the people of the United States are to govern through
representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages [votes] or
whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be
secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their
decisions."

And the
president who followed him, Martin Van Buren, added in
his annual address to Congress: "I am more than ever convinced
of the dangers to which the free and unbiased exercise of
political opinion -- the only sure foundation and safeguard of
republican government -- would be exposed by any further increase
of the already overgrown influence of corporate authorities."

Abraham
Lincoln warned, "We may congratulate
ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a
vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of the flower
of American youth has been freely offered upon our country's
altar that the nation might live. It has indeed been a trying
hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis
approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the
safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have
been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will
follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to
prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people
until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic
is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever
before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions
may prove groundless."

"The
money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace, and conspire
against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic
than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than
bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies, all who question their
methods or throw light upon their crimes.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

"Behind the ostensible
government sits enthroned an
invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no
responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to
befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt
politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today." ~
PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace —
business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class
antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the
United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now
that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government
by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces
been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are
unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.
~ President Franklin
D. Roosevelt"The
real truth of the matter is, as you and I know,
that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government
ever since the days of Andrew Jackson."~
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT in a
letter to Colonel Edward M. House
Soon after his rise to power,
Mussolini defined his economic stance by
saying: "The [Fascist] government will accord full freedom to private
enterprise and will abandon all intervention in private economy."[29]- which turned out to mean that corporations would have the
power that used to reside in the people.

"Fascism should more
properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." ~
Benito Mussolini

The Roberts Court showed its true colors last Thursday,
with its brazen
and intellectually dishonest power grab in the Citizens United
case.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it shared those same unfortunate
characteristics with the Rehnquist Court in its Bush v. Gore decision.
After all, the core trio is the same--Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas.
And the two newcomers, Roberts and Alito, showed they
were as disingenuous, misleading, and unfaithful to their supposed
principles as the Bush v. Gore crowd had been.They really
should be
impeached. They
deserve it. After all,
they spit right in the Senate's eyes. I assume the Senate doesn't have
enough self-respect to actually stand up for itself, but what does the
Senate's right to confirmation mean if Roberts and Alito can carry
enough votes only by knowingly spreading disinformation for several
days? And if they then quickly prove they didn't tell the Senators the
truth, shouldn't they be impeached? Just like Alberto Gonzales should
have been impeached for pretending he couldn't remember anything...and
Karl Rove for refusing to even show up...Don't they all have in common
an intentional contempt for Congress?
This is a dangerous decision, deliberately designed to tilt the
political playing field acutely towards corporations. Whatever
responses we can creatively come up with, and organize around, we
should pursue. Imho, this does not mean just one cure-all response; it
means a whole range of push-backs.
We've launched a new activist group,
FreeSpeechforPeople.org , with the goal of rolling back the false
premise of corporate free speech. We believe, like most Americans with
common sense, that political free speech is for people, not for
corporations. More important, that's really what the Constitution
means, too.
So we will be supporting netroots favorite Rep. Donna Edwards'
impending Constitutional Amendment to
restore free speech rights for people in
politics. We will be organizing lawyers to invalidate the bogus
legal
theories that the Roberts Court is trying to sell as the basis for
their fraudulent ruling. We'll be working to demonstrate the hypocrisy
of the Roberts Court, supposedly dedicated to stare decisis and strict
constructionism, while trying to discredit their obviously fake
opposition to judicial activism. And we will be glad to work in
coalition with those who want to make rolling back this awful decision
a key point in the selection of any new Supreme Court justices.We chose this avenue because we believe this is very strong
ground
to fight back on. This is not only fairer for real people, it allows us
to fight on the same side as the century of court cases, which favored
the people's right to political free speech, not some invented
corporate privilege. It allows us to stand on the side of the
Constitution's Founders, which clearly did not have corporations in
mind when they penned the First Amendment.
Oh, and for those of you who immediately object to the odds against a
Constitutional Amendment, yes, we understand how hard that road is. But
we also understand how much the Far Right has gained over the past half
century by pushing for Constitutional Amendments and impeachments (from
Earl Warren to Bill Clinton), even when they never got close to
succeeding on those tasks.They gained ground by changing the public debate, changing
the
issues being discussed, putting liberals on the defensive even when
they were correct on key issues, intimidating centrist Democrats, and
organizing supporters all over the country. They never got Earl Warren
impeached or Bill Clinton convicted, haven't yet won their anti-choice
or school prayer Constitutional Amendments--still, their issues usually
drive the public debate.Besides, it's a potentially populist moment in America, and
millions of political conservatives and libertarians also fear the
rising power of multinational corporations. There is potential here for
a "strange bedfellows" organizing fight--which means that even a
Constitutional Amendment or two might be possible.
So if you want to join us, please
click here .
I do want to be clear--we do not believe we have the only solution to
the dangerous and widespread increase in corporate power during the
last few decades, of which the Citizens United ruling is just the
latest abuse.
We support Public Campaign, Common Cause, U.S. Pirg,
and all the other campaign finance activists who have worked for
literally decades to publicly fund our elections. We support the Fair
Elections Now Act (FENA), sponsored by Rep. John Larson
and Senator Dick Durbin.
We agree with Public Campaign that clean money is a necessary step to
rescuing our political system from the entrenched greed of too-powerful
corporations.
You can help Public
Campaign here.
We also agree with our friends at MovetoAmend.orgthat
a huge underlying
problem in combatting corporate power is the
misguided legal notion that got illegitimately injected into our body
politic in the late 1880s, that wrongly suggested the idea of corporate
personhood. It's a fiction. The Founders never believed it. So we also
need a Constitutional Amendment to erase that stain on James Madison's
best work.Jump on MovetoAmend's
petition here.
There are other good ideas out there. Public Citizen,
for one, is pushing the
concept of shareholder approval prior to corporate political spending. E.
J. Dionne's column
this morning suggests others, and I know many other creative people are
responding angrily to this outrageous decision with good ideas.
And I would even suggest that one of the better short-term responses to
the Roberts Court's impudent power grab would be to pass EFCA, the Employee
Free Choice Act.
Since the Roberts Court's ruling allows labor unions as well as
corporations to spend directly from their treasuries on politics now,
we could respond to this provocation by doing whatever we can to
increase the power of labor unions.
Yes, they'll still be vastly outspent by corporate money--but at least
if we pass EFCA, and make it easier to add millions of working
Americans to the union movement, labor money can counteract some of the
power imbalance the Supreme Court just created. Plus, we should pass
EFCA anyway, on its own merits.
What do you think, Mr. President, Speaker Pelosi? The Roberts Court is
trying a nasty, brazen power grab. How about fighting back immediately,
with tough new restrictions on Wall Street and corporate execs, passing
EFCA, and clean money public elections through FENA, combined with
serious and well-publicized hearings on the need to roll back so-called
corporate free speech and corporate personhood?
The Roberts Court is trying to steal the House and Senate majorities
for its corporate team. It's trying to flood our political system with
corporate money to cut off the Obama Administration at only one term.
It's wrong, it's a stain on the Constitution, and we'd like to help
fight back.

10 Ways to Stop Corporate
Dominance of Politics

It's not too late to limit or
reverse the impact of the Supreme Court's disastrous decision in
Citizens United v. FEC.

by Fran Korten

The recent Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited corporate
spending in politics just may be the straw that breaks the plutocracy's
back.

Pro-democracy groups, business leaders, and elected
representatives
are proposing mechanisms to prevent or counter the millions of dollars
that corporations can now draw from their treasuries to push for
government action favorable to their bottom line. The outrage ignited
by the Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission
extends to President Obama, who has promised that repairing the damage
will be a priority for his administration.

But what can be done to limit or reverse the effect of the
Court's decision? Here are 10 ideas:

Amend the U.S. Constitution to declare that corporations are not persons
and do not have the rights of human beings. Since the First Amendment
case for corporate spending as a free speech right rests on
corporations being considered "persons," the proposed amendment would
strike at the core of the ruling's justification. The push for the 28th
Amendment is coming from the grassroots, where a prairie fire is
catching on from groups such as Public Citizen, Voter
Action, and the Campaign to
Legalize Democracy.

Require shareholders to approve political spending by
their corporations. Public Citizen and the Brennan Center
for Justice
are among the groups advocating this measure, and some members of
Congress appear interested. Britain has required such shareholder
approval since 2000.

Pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which provides
federal
financing for Congressional elections. This measure has the backing of
organizations representing millions of Americans, including Moveon.org,
the NAACP, the Service Employees International Union, and the League of
Young Voters. Interestingly, the heads of a number of major
corporations have also signed on, including those of Ben & Jerry's,
Hasbro, Crate & Barrel, and the former head of Delta Airlines.

Give qualified candidates equal amounts of free
broadcast air time
for political messages. This would limit the advantages of paid
advertisements in reaching the public through television where most
political spending goes.

Ban political advertising by corporations that
receive government money,
hire lobbyists, or collect most of their revenue abroad. A fear that
many observers have noted is that the Court's ruling will allow foreign
corporations to influence U.S. elections. According to The New York
Times, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen
(D-Maryland) are exploring this option.

Impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate
contributions
to political committees and on corporate expenditures on political
advocacy campaigns. Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) proposes
this, calling it "The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act."

Prohibit companies from trading their stock on national
exchanges
if they make political contributions and expenditures. Another one from
Grayson, which he calls "The Public Company Responsibility Act."

Require publicly traded companies to disclose in SEC
filings
money used for the purpose of influencing public opinion, rather than
for promoting their products. Grayson calls this "The Corporate
Propaganda Sunshine Act."

Require the corporate CEO to appear as sponsor of
commercials that his or her company pays for, another possibility
from the Schumer-Van Hollen team, according to The New York Times

Publicize the reform options, inform the public of who
is making contributions to whom, and activate the citizenry. If we
are to safeguard our democracy, media must inform and citizens must act.

The measures listed above-and others that seek to reverse the dominance of money
in our political system-will not be easy. But grassroots anger at this
latest win for corporate power is running high. History shows that when
the public is sufficiently aroused, actions that once seemed impossible
can, in hindsight, seem inevitable.

Fran Korten wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national,
nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical
actions. Fran is publisher of YES! Magazine.

A 2007 study by the Bush
Administration’s Treasury Department found
that the corporate tax burden is lower, on average, in the United
States than in other developed countries.

In addition, the
Government Accountability Office has found that the United States
collects only a very small amount of revenue on U.S. corporations’
foreign-source income. In 2004, U.S. multinational corporations
earned
roughly $700 billion abroad but paid only $16 billion to the IRS on
these earnings.

The Obama proposal recognizes the current
context — our nation’s grave fiscal outlook, a relatively low corporate
tax burden by comparison to other countries, and a broken international
tax regime — and advances a balanced approach that warrants careful
consideration."

Tons
of major corporations like American Express, A.I.G, Boeing,
Hewlett-Packard and Pfizer hide profits in the Cayman Islands and other
tax havens. In fact, over 18,000 U.S. companies currently maintain a
post office box in one five story building in the Cayman Islands to
take advantage of a tax loophole3.

And while those companies
flaunt the law, we're stuck cleaning up their economic wreckage. We've
spent over $600 trillion bailing out wall street, but those same
corporations aren't playing by our rules, yet.

Drew Hudson
TrueMajority / USAction
1 -
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/04/AR2009050400703.html?hpid=topnews
2 - reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE5434YZ20090504
3 - uspirg.org/issues/tax-and-budget/close-corporate-tax-loopholesWhite House Tax Proposals "Controversial,"
Senator Baucus Says http://www.truthout.org/050509L?n
Martin Vaughan, Dow Jones Newswires: "Senate Finance Committee Chairman
Max Baucus, D-Mont., said President Barack Obama's proposals to ratchet
up taxes on the foreign profits of US firms are 'controversial' and may
not be enacted this year. 'We want to make sure the playing field is
level so our American companies are able to compete,' Baucus told
reporters before Senate votes Monday evening. He said White House
proposals to crack down on offshore tax evasion by individuals may well
move more quickly, however."

May 1, 2009, 10:34AM

Yesterday the Senate Banking Committee, with
Democratic Senators
joining a unified Republican base, killed
a provision to allow bankruptcy judges
re-negotiate home mortgages to stave off foreclosures. Yesterday
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois made an interesting, little-reported
charge on the Ed
Shultz Show (MSNBC):

"[Facing]
8 million mortgage foreclosures in America, that means 1 out of every 6
home mortgages will go into foreclosure, and that is not my estimate
that is Moody's,..., sitting down and negotiating for months to find a
reasonable way for people to keep their homes, to renegotiate the
mortgage or have a bankruptcy judge make one last attempt----THE
BANKS HAVE WALKED AWAY FROM THE TABLE, only CitiGroup is willing to
work with us."

Ed
Shultz quoting Durbin from another radio interview: "So after taking
billions (if not trillions) of tax payer dollars, the banks are now so
obstinate to refuse to negotiate and then quoted Durbin saying "THE
BANKS OWN THE SENATE".

Shultz repeating the question: "Do you believe the 'BANKS OWN THE
SENATE'?"

Durbin: "It is an uphill battle right now, and I cannot get 60 votes in
the Senate."

Shultz: "So the lobbying power is that strong?"

Durbin:
"It is hard to believe that they bring us this crisis, the crisis that
has brought us this recession [err DEPRESSION], when they receive
billions of dollars of taxpayer money, for mistakes they have made,
billions of dollars, that they refuse to sit down and work out a
reasonable compromise....the next thing we are moving on is credit
cards..."

Now you have that, then you have the
failed Chrysler negotiations where Obama stated that a few [Wall
Street] creditors [again] walked away from the table and refused to
participate.

Here is the deal folks. Wall Street pirates have
created an illusion that they are essential to capitalism, that they
are capitalism and they must be served WITHOUT hair cuts,
compromises or changes.
This of course is unsustainable and irresponsible, as well as, how
mobsters, gangsters, and pirates would react with total obstinance and
arrogance. In short it is a developing class war.

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever,
whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political
instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a
justification of torture. . .
Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences
under its criminal law.

"The
United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation
of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development
during this century of international measures against torture and other
inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the
United States will clearly express United States opposition to
torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the
world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for
international cooperation in the criminal
prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction."
Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are
found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for
prosecution.

It's literally true that if you say today verbatim
what Ronald Reagan said in 1988 about torture and the need to prosecute
those who do it, then you are immediately and by definition a rabid
score-settler from the Hard Left who is unfit to be trusted with
national security decisions.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/01-10

In 2008, the first full year of the crisis,
workers lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. During the same
time period, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans increased by $30
billion, bringing their total combined wealth to $1.57 trillion, which
is more than the combined net worth of 50% of the US population. Just
to make this point clear, 400 people have more wealth than 155 million
people combined.---David DeGraw, "The Economic Elite vs. People of the
USA"

In recent years, the Washington political dynamic
has
often resembled an abusive marriage, in which the bullying husband (the
Republicans) slaps the wife and kids around, and the battered wife (the
Democrats) makes excuses and hides the ugly bruises from outsiders to
keep the family together.

So, when the
Republicans are in a position
of power, they throw their weight around, break the rules, and taunt:
"Whaddya gonna do 'bout it?"

Then, when the
Republicans do the political
equivalent of passing out on the couch, the Democrats use their time in
control, tiptoeing around, tidying up the house and cringing at every
angry grunt from the snoring figure on the couch.

This pattern,
which now appears to be
repeating itself with President Barack Obama's unwillingness to hold
ex-President George W. Bush and his subordinates accountable for a host
of crimes including torture, may have had its origins 40 years ago in
Campaign 1968 when the Vietnam War was raging.

President Lyndon
Johnson felt he was on the
verge of achieving a negotiated peace settlement when he learned in
late October 1968 that operatives working for Republican presidential
candidate Richard Nixon were secretly sabotaging the Paris peace talks.

Nixon, who was
getting classified briefings
on the talks' progress, feared that an imminent peace accord might
catapult Vice President Hubert Humphrey to victory. So, Nixon's team
sent secret messages to South Vietnamese leaders offering them a better
deal if they boycotted Johnson's talks and helped Nixon to victory,
which they agreed to do.

Johnson learned
about Nixon's gambit through
wiretaps of the South Vietnamese embassy and he confronted Nixon by
phone (only to get an unconvincing denial). At that point, Johnson knew
his only hope was to expose Nixon's maneuver which Johnson called
"treason" since it endangered the lives of a half million American
soldiers in the war zone.

As a Christian
Science Monitor reporter
sniffed out the story and sought confirmation, Johnson consulted
Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford about
whether to expose Nixon's ploy right before the election. Both Rusk and
Clifford urged Johnson to stay silent.

In what would
become a Democratic refrain in
the years ahead, Clifford said in a Nov. 4, 1968, conference call that
"Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I'm
wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the
story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected. It
could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it
would be inimical to our country's interests."

So,
Johnson stayed silent "for the good
of the country"; Nixon eked out a narrow victory over Humphrey; the
Vietnam War continued for another four years with an additional 20,763
U.S. dead and 111,230 wounded and more than a million more Vietnamese
killed.

Over
the years, as bits and pieces of
this story have dribbled out - including confirmation from audiotapes
released by the LBJ Library in December 2008 - the Democrats and the
mainstream news media have never made much out of Nixon's deadly
treachery. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Significance of Nixon's
Treason."]

The
Watergate Exception

The one
exception to this pattern of the
Democrats' "battered wife syndrome" may have been the Watergate case in
which Nixon sought to secure his second term, in part, by spying on his
political rivals, including putting bugs on phones at the Democratic
National Committee.

When Nixon's
team was caught in a second
break-in - trying to add more bugs - the scandal erupted.

Even then,
however, key Democrats, such as
Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss, tried to shut down the
Watergate investigation as it was expanding early in Nixon's second
term. Strauss argued that the inquiries would hurt the country, but
enough other Democrats and an energized Washington press corps overcame
the resistance. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy &
Privilege.]

With Nixon's
Watergate-compelled resignation
in August 1974, the Republicans were at a crossroads. In one direction,
they could start playing by the rules and seek to be a responsible
political party. Or they could internalize Nixon's pugnacious style and
build an infrastructure to punish anyone who tried to hold them
accountable in the future.

Essentially, the
Republicans picked option
two. Under the guidance of Nixon's Treasury Secretary William Simon,
right-wing foundations collaborated to build a powerful new
infrastructure, pooling resources to finance right-wing publications,
think tanks and anti-journalism attack groups. As this infrastructure
took shape in the late 1970s, it imbued the Republicans with more
confidence.

So, before
Election 1980, the Republican
campaign - bolstered by former CIA operatives loyal to former CIA
Director George H.W. Bush - resorted to Nixon-style tactics in
exploiting President Jimmy Carter's failure to free 52 American
hostages then held in Iran.

The
evidence is now overwhelming that
Republican operatives, including campaign chief Bill Casey and some of
his close associates, had back- channel contacts with Iran's Islamic
regime and other foreign governments to confound Carter's hostage
negotiations. Though much of this evidence has seeped out over the past
29 years, some was known in real time.

Senior Carter
administration officials, such
as National Security Council aide Gary Sick, also were hearing rumors
about Republican interference, and President Carter concluded that
Israel's hard-line Likud leaders had "cast their lot with Reagan,"
according to notes I found of a congressional task force interview with
Carter a dozen years later.

Carter traced
the Israeli opposition to him
to a "lingering concern [among] Jewish leaders that I was too friendly
with Arabs."

Israel already
had begun playing a key
middleman role in delivering secret military shipments to Iran, as
Carter knew. But - again for "the good of the country" - Carter and his
White House kept silent.

Since the first
anniversary of the hostage
crisis coincidentally fell on Election Day 1980, Reagan benefited from
the voters' anger over the national humiliation and scored a resounding
victory. [For more details on the 1980 "October Surprise" case, see
Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

GOP's
Growing Confidence

Though much of
the public saw Reagan as a
tough guy who had frightened the Iranians into surrendering the
hostages on Inauguration Day 1981, the behind-the-scenes reality was
different.

In secret, the
Reagan administration winked
at Israeli weapons shipments to Iran in the first half of 1981, what
appeared to be a payoff for Iran's cooperation in sabotaging Carter.
Nicholas Veliotes, who was then assistant secretary of state, told a
PBS interviewer that he saw those secret shipments as an outgrowth of
the covert Republican- Iranian contacts from the campaign.

Veliotes added
that those early shipments
then became the "germs" of the later Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages
scandal.

But the
Republicans seemed to have little to
fear from exposure. Their media infrastructure was rapidly expanding -
for instance, the right- wing Washington Times opened in 1982 - and
America's Left didn't see the need to counter this growing media power
on the Right.

The right-wing
attack groups also had
success targeting mainstream journalists who dug up information that
didn't fit with Reagan's propaganda themes - the likes of the New York
Times Raymond Bonner, whose brave reporting about right-wing death
squads in Central America led to his recall from the region and his
resignation from the Times.

This new
right-wing muscle, combined with
Ronald Reagan's political popularity, made Democrats and mainstream
journalists evermore hesitant to pursue negative stories about
Republican policies, including evidence that Reagan's favorite "freedom
fighters," the Nicaraguan contras, were dabbling in cocaine trafficking
and that an illegal contra-aid operation was set up inside the White
House.

In mid-1986,
when my Associated Press
colleague Brian Barger and I put together a story citing two dozen
sources about the work of NSC official Oliver North, congressional
Democrats were hesitant to follow up on the disclosures.

Finally in
August 1986, the House
Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Democrat Lee Hamilton and
including Republican Rep. Dick Cheney, met with North and other White
House officials in the Situation Room and were told that the AP story
was untrue. With no further investigation, the Democratic-led committee
accepted the word of North and his superiors.

Lucky
Exposure

It was only an
unlikely occurrence on Oct.
5, 1986, the shooting down of one of North's supply planes over
Nicaragua and a confession by the one survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, that
put the House Intelligence Committee's gullibility into focus.

The plane
shoot-down - and disclosures from
the Middle East about secret U.S. arms sales to Iran - forced the
Iran-Contra scandal into public view. The congressional Democrats
responded by authorizing a joint House-Senate investigation, with
Hamilton as one of the mild- mannered co-chairs and Cheney again
leading the GOP's tough-guy defense.

While the
Republicans worked to undermine
the investigation, the Democrats looked for a bipartisan solution that
would avoid a messy confrontation with President Reagan and Vice
President Bush. That solution was to put most of the blame on North and
a few of his superiors, such as NSC adviser John Poindexter and the
then-deceased CIA Director Bill Casey.

The
congressional investigation also made a
hasty decision, supported by Hamilton and the Republicans but opposed
by most Democrats, to give limited immunity to secure the testimony of
North.

Hamilton agreed
to this immunity without
knowing what North would say. Rather than show any contrition, North
used his immunized testimony to rally Republicans and other Americans
in support of Reagan's aggressive, above-the-law tactics.

The immunity
also crippled later attempts by
special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh to hold North and Poindexter
accountable under the law. Though Walsh won convictions against the
pair in federal court, the judgments were overturned by right-wing
judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals citing the immunity granted by
Congress.

By the early
1990s, the pattern was set.
Whenever new evidence emerged of Republican wrongdoing - such as
disclosures about contra-drug trafficking, secret military support for
Saddam Hussein's Iraq and those early Republican-Iran contacts of 1980
- the Republicans would lash out in fury and the Democrats would try to
calm things down.

Lee Hamilton
became the Republicans'
favorite Democratic investigator because he exemplified this approach
of conducting "bipartisan" investigations, rather than aggressively
pursuing the facts wherever they might lead. While in position to seek
the truth, Hamilton ignored the contra-drug scandal and swept the
Iraq-gate and October Surprise issues under a very lumpy rug.

In 1992, I
interviewed Spencer Oliver, a
Democratic staffer whose phone at the Watergate building had been
bugged by Nixon's operatives 20 years earlier. Since then, Oliver had
served as the chief counsel on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and
had observed this pattern of Republican abuses and Democratic excuses.

Oliver said:
"What [the Republicans] learned
from Watergate was not 'don't do it,' but 'cover it up more
effectively.' They have learned that they have to frustrate
congressional oversight and press scrutiny in a way that will avoid
another major scandal."

The
Clinton Opportunity

The final chance
for exposing the Republican
crimes of the 1980s fell to Bill Clinton after he defeated President
George H.W. Bush in 1992.

Before leaving
office, however, Bush-41
torpedoed the ongoing Iran- Contra criminal investigation by issuing
six pardons, including one to former Defense Secretary Caspar
Weinberger whose cover-up trial was set to begin in early 1993.

Special
prosecutor Walsh - a lifelong
Republican albeit from the old Eisenhower wing of the party - denounced
the pardons as another obstruction of justice. "George Bush's misuse of
the pardon power made the cover-up complete," Walsh later wrote in his
book Firewall.

However, the
Iran-Contra investigation was
not yet dead. Indeed, Walsh was considering empanelling a new grand
jury. Walsh also had come to suspect that the origins of the scandal
traced back to the October Surprise of 1980, with his investigators
questioning former CIA officer Donald Gregg about his alleged role in
that prequel to Iran- Contra.

The new
Democratic President could have
helped Walsh by declassifying key documents that the Reagan-Bush-41
team had withheld from various investigations. But Clinton followed
advice from Hamilton and other senior Democrats who feared stirring
partisan anger among Republicans.

Later, in a May
1994 conversation with
documentary filmmaker Stuart Sender, Clinton explained that he had
opposed pursuing these Republican scandals because, according to
Sender, "he was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build
working relationships....

"It seemed even
at the time terribly
naive that these same Republicans were going to work with him if
he backed off on congressional hearings or possible independent
prosecutor investigations." [See Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

No
Reciprocity

But the
Democrats - like the battered wife
who keeps hoping her abusive husband will change - found a different
reality as the decade played out.

Rather than
thanking Clinton, the
Republicans bullied him with endless investigations about his family
finances, the ethics of his appointees - and his personal morality,
ultimately impeaching him in 1998 for lying about a sexual affair
(though he survived the Senate trial in 1999).

After the
impeachment battle, the
Republicans - joined by both the right-wing and mainstream news media -
kept battering Clinton and his heir apparent, Vice President Al Gore,
who was mocked for his choice of clothing and denounced for his
supposed exaggerations.

Though Gore
still managed to win the popular
vote in Election 2000 and apparently would have prevailed if all
legally cast votes had been counted in Florida, the Republicans made
clear that wasn't going to happen, even dispatching rioters from
Washington to disrupt a recount in Miami.

George W. Bush's
bullying victory - which
was finalized by five Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court -
was met with polite acceptance by the Democrats who again seemed to
hope for the best from the newly empowered Republicans. [For details on
Election 2000, see our book, Neck Deep.]

Instead, after
the 9/11 attacks, Bush-43
grabbed unprecedented powers; he authorized torture and warrantless
wiretaps; he pressured Democrats into accepting an unprovoked war in
Iraq; and he sought to damage his critics, such as former Ambassador
Joseph Wilson.

Now, after eight
destructive years, the
Democrats have again gained control of the White House and Congress,
but they seem intent on once more not provoking the Republicans, rather
than holding them accountable.

Though President
Barack Obama has released
some of the key documents underpinning Bush-43's actions, he opposes
any formal commission of inquiry and has discouraged any prosecutions
for violations of federal law. Obama has said he wants "to look forward
as opposed to looking backward."

In dismissing
the idea of a "truth and
reconciliation commission," Obama also recognizes that the Republicans
would show no remorse for the Bush administration's actions; that they
would insist that there is nothing to "reconcile"; and that they would
stay on the attack, pummeling the Democrats as weak, overly sympathetic
to terrorists, and endangering national security.

On Thursday,
White House spokesman Robert
Gibbs admitted as much, saying that Obama rejected the idea of a
bipartisan "truth commission" because it was apparent that there was no
feasible way to get the Republicans to be bipartisan.

"The President
determined the concept didn't
seem altogether workable in this case," Gibbs said, citing the partisan
atmosphere that already has surrounded the torture issue. "The last few
days might be evidence of why something like this might just become a
political back and forth."

In other words,
the Republicans are rousing
themselves from the couch and getting angry, while the Democrats are
prancing about, hands out front, trying to calm things down and avoid a
confrontation.

The Democrats
hope against hope that if they
tolerate the latest Republican outrages maybe there will be some
reciprocity, maybe there will be some GOP votes on Democratic policy
initiatives.

But there's no
logical reason to think so.
That isn't how the Republicans and their right-wing media allies do
things; they simply get angrier because belligerence has worked so well
for so long.

On the other
hand, Democratic wishful
thinking is the essence of this political "battered wife syndrome,"
dreaming about a behavioral transformation when all the evidence - and
four decades of experience - tell you that the bullying husband isn't
going to change.

--------

Robert
Parry broke many of the
Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.
His latest book, "Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W.
Bush," was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be
ordered at neckdeepbook.com.
His two previous books, "Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the
Bush
Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq" and "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine,
the Press & 'Project Truth'" are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

He approved the ports deal, knowing that Dubai's boycott of Israel was
illegal under U.S. law.

He
failed to hand over delinquent mining company safety violation fees to
the Department of the Treasury, as required by law. (He also decreased
major fines, and did not collect any in half of the cases.)

He violated the law when he secured the UAE ports deal without the
required national security review.

Bush's nuclear deal with India violates U.S. and international nuclear
nonproliferation laws.

A roughly
chronological
list of the Bush administrations criminal or unconstitutional actions.

Remember, Article VI, Section 2 of the Constitution reads:
“This
Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in
Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under
the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the
Land.“
so treaty violations are unconstitutional even if they do not violate a
specific Constitutional amendment.

8.Employing chemical weapons (white phosphorous gas employed as
a weapon rather than illumination) in violation of the 1925 Geneva
Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or
other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare.

9.Holding prisoners of war and “enemy combatants” indefinitely
without a fair trial in violation of the Geneva Convention IV, Art. 147
& Protocol 1, Art. 85.

Of the above violations, numbers 9, 10, 11,12 & 13 are
considered Grave breaches of the Conventions and Protocols and are war
crimes.

Ordered the confinement, transfer to foreign countries and CIA
“shadow detention centers” and torture of civilians in violation of the
Geneva Convention, Protocol IV, Art. 147. This is also considered a
Grave breach of the Conventions and Protocols and is a war crime.

Ordered the illegal surveillance of American citizens in
violation of U.S. law (the FISA) and the 4th amendment of the
Constitution.

Refused to furnish Congress with information regarding FBI activities
in violation of the USAPATRIOT Act.Obstruction of
justice.While
the special counsel's investigation is continuing, it appears that Bush
was at least aware of efforts to cover up, and may well have been
involved in, a White House campaign to punish and discredit former
ambassador Joseph Wilson by illegally exposing his wife, Valerie Plame,
as an undercover CIA operative, which is itself a felony.

Benjamin Ferencz is a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials
who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in
orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in
the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become
a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war
crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials
and later the commission that established the International Criminal
Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.

Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion
that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against
mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible
the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the
tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and
on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that
the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that
being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple
summary of the case:

"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the
United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War
II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without
the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in
connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in
anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council
resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to
Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll
figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided
to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United
States went to war, in violation of the charter."

It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law,"
and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous
U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War
justified an invasion in 2003. Ferencz notes that the first Bush
president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to
go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply
to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get
authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments
made to defend this are not persuasive."

Clothes
make the man. Naked people have
little or no influence on society.- Mark
Twain

I
pledge allegiance to fossil fuel for
the SUV's of America, and to the engine in which it burns, one
nation,
under gas, combustible, withlung
cancer and global warming for
all.

Live
Faust, Die Jung

Dateline Nov. 5, 2008
by -
Betty BowersMeet Tonya
Jenkins. She died of shock this morning. You see, the poor
thing had spent the past two years getting all of her information from
Sean Hannity. She would then go to her favorite website, Free
Republic,
and read thousands and thousands and thousands of vitriolic posts, all
containing no facts inconsistent with Mr. Hannity’s and no opinions
that caused Tonya to rethink her own.

Tonya went to bed last night with a tumbler of cold tequila and a head
full of comfy knowledge. She knew that the Lord Jesus would answer her
prayer to never let no colored Muslim communist terrorist be no durn
president. She was certain she would wake up to find that sassy Sarah
Palin and her running mate, a wonderfully mavericky war hero, had been
elected instead. In her Christian heart, Tonya was confident that
Americans were every bit as racist as Republicans hoped they’d turn out
to be, as the much discussed, posted about and wished for “Bradley Effect”
would work its reactionary magic at the polls.

But
this morning at work, Tonya got sloppy. Maybe she was tired.
Maybe just a bit hungover. Whatever the cause for her lapse, she became
infected by the Liberal Elite Mainstream Media. As she carelessly bused
her table, she inadvertently glanced at a New York Times a suspiciously
informed dinner had mischievously left behind. Sensing danger, she
tried to look away, but it was too late. She’d already read the
headline. Before she could blindfold herself with the rag she was using
to wipe the table and repeat her “la la la la MR. FACTS I DON’T HEAR
YOU! la la ” incantation, inconvenient information had
already
burrowed into her head like anthrax spores. Poor Tonya’s bitter heart
just couldn’t take the shock: The America of FoxNews and her favorite
right wing website wasn’t the America she was walking and breathing in.
Before I could call out “But Florida and California still hate the
homos!” to revive her, she was gone.